The Dark Knight Rises iOS Review

With the release of the highly anticipated Dark Knight Rises among us, it was not a surprise that the block buster movie would receive a video game adaptation. Does this game break the trend of horrible video game movie tie-ins?

The Dark Knight Rises iOS starts off about half way through the film with Batman investigating a lead on the cat burglar Selina Kyle. Developer Gameloft have tried their best here to keep additional plot devices out of the game and only focusing on key plot points for players to take part in. This is probably because of the overall lack of Batman throughout certain portions of the story and because of this, you may start out a little confused with what is going on in the story if you haven’t seen the movie.

For what it included though, it is a pretty good digital adaption for people wanting to get a little more out of the Nolan trilogy as you take on the open world environment of Gotham City. Players are cast as the brooding Dark Knight as he goes on a personal mission to defeat Bane and stop his plans to destroy Gotham city. As mentioned the plot can be a little confusing to new comers. You won’t know who a select number of the new characters are without taking a trip down to your local cinema but thankfully the game keeps the story skipping along with additional plot as to give your time as Batman a little more duration. For people who have seen the movie, you will find that half of the stuff you do while playing never actually happened in the film, such as an extended escape from a Mexican prison that was obviously designed to give the level more than just 4 minutes in length. Apart from that you could say that the story while dressed as the caped crusader was actually happening between the scenes that you never saw during the movie. This does bring a little bit of contradiction to the overall plot though as Batman was in a little bit of a hurry during the final moments of the film which I won’t spoil but in the game he is given all the time he needs to defeat Bane. This can make the story drag a little as you never feel the tension that the film portrayed when Batman take the fight to Bane at that final part in the movie.

As mentioned, the game adds its own extra bits of plot to add length to the game and to not spoil anything for unaware gamers. This will consist of grapple gunning, driving and punching your way through the entirety of Gotham City in missions and side quests that allow Batman to disrupt Bane and his lackies plans. I would probably say thought that this is one story you won’t be sitting on the edge of your seat on sadly.
Not only that but the game looks great too with a sharply modelled Batman that looks like a spitting image of his original movie version. The detail on the bat suit itself is textured wonderfully and when the game places rain into the environment, you won’t be able to help drooling over the addition of seeing the rainfall run down the kevlar vest. Gotham looks great too but doesn’t add much variety in terms of buildings additional environments. Everything fits well enough together and is pretty close to what you might expect from a preview era PS2 game like Max Payne2: Fall of Max Payne with the added shine. Sadly other characters including the villainous Bane are given less love with their visual rendering as all attention seems to have been put on Batman himself.

The gameplay is actually the star of the show here. Taking many inspirations from Rocksteady’s Arkham franchise, Dark Knight Rises gives you full control of Batman in the palm of your hand. Controlling the caped crusader is done with the usual use of virtual analog sticks and they actually work really well. Additional actions are provided with buttons mapped on the right side of the screen that allow you to punch, jump counter and use your grapple gun and batarangs. Surprisingly all these buttons don’t get in the way of the action or your thumbs you so will be bringing justice to baddies as soon as you pick up the IPhone/ iPad with the really accessible controls.

To traverse around the city Batman can use two different abilities to journey between the connecting rooftops with the use of a grapple gun and cape. The grapple gun works a lot like the Arkham’s grapple gun or Team Ninja’s Tenchu as you freely aim your reticule at the corners of ledges and fire away freely to make it to the tops of platforms. When you need to travel a great distance you simply just press jump button and Batman will open his cape and soar gracefully across the city. All this is controllable too which means you will be able to duck and weave between the many buildings as your make your way to the next objective. Not only this but during other missions you will be given control of the popular Bat-pod motorcycle or the film’s newly introduced aerial Bat vehicle. These all work great within the games tiny interface with simple controls like turning, accelerating and reverse. I will say though that it was a shame that when turning in the Bat-pod that you don’t get to experience the cool aesthetic of the films on Bat cycle in which the wheels roll sideways when turning corners. It is only a nit-pick though and is probably just based on the limitations of the game and its hardware.

Taking on thugs is easy to do too with continuous button presses on the screen. To mix things up the enemies will occasionally fight back from behind to which forces you to mix up the fighting with well-timed counter attacks or block breaking somersaults over enemy heads. It all feels fantastically fluid and each fight looks and feels great as well. Combat goes that one step further with additional gadgets to use too such as flashbangs, batarangs, and the already mentioned grappling hook which allows you to pull unsuspecting enemies towards you for a quick knockout. These gadgets can be improved on through the course of the game too by using earned credits and XP from defeating enemies to upgrade and unlock other gadgets. Some of these gadgets include softening your footsteps so that you can perform stealthy take downs and making your cape become a nano enhanced cloak so that you can hunt your enemies by air without being detected. This is all greatly welcomed and brings in a lot of replay value as you battle to unlock more and more gadgets and content. Puzzle fans can get some fun out of the game too which the in-game hacking feature which allows you to unlock hidden areas and gadget boxes through the use of a pipe mania type mini game. Tapping the little icons to line up the lights to the goal is all easy to do and just as tense as the combat as you battle against time to gain entry to hidden hostages or mystery prizes.

While the gameplay is great, the sound design can be a little bit of a mixed bag. Sadly none of the movie’s cast members return to portray their respective roles and are instead replaced with voice actors that try their best with the talents they possess. While Bruce Wayne may sound a little different, their lead VA for Batman is a great interpretation of the gruff, sore throated super hero. Alfred also gets a nice little bit of attention with a solid voice actor; while Bane leaves with a ultimately disappointing portrayal with no deep, threatening evil touches to his accent like the super talented Tom Hardy gave us in the movie.

The score is kept epic throughout though with some borrowing of the great DKR soundtrack. This helps the combat segments a lot in adding that instrumental touch to the overall feel of continuous battle. I felt though that the free roaming segments in between could have used with some louder music though as gliding through the air as Batman feels a little empty at times without something closer to DKR’s main theme music that is used in the film. All in all it can feel like the background music is a little too quiet at times or just missing in places.

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